A/N: Before I get into the meat of this chapter, a quick note I forgot to mention last time: this fanfic is set in Earth-662547 (phone code for 'NOCLIP') of my fanfic multiverse. Not sure if it'll come up anywhere else, but just in case it does…. Anyway, read, review, and enjoy!
Spoiler alert: I do not own Marvel or the Backrooms.
It burns.
Can't see…I can't see….
I can't see!
It had all been so loud back then, and it was just as loud now.
He had learned how to control his senses so the cacophony of noises constantly around him didn't deafen him, how to focus on the important sounds. But now all he could hear was some buzzing. Like the bombination of fluorescent lighting, but dialed up to eleven.
Matt sat up, the ground squishing slightly below him as he shifted. The buzzing was dominating all his senses; he couldn't tell where he was. He pulled off one of his gloves and felt the ground. Carpet…wet carpet.
He rubbed his forehead. Where the hell was he? He had just gotten back from picking up his new suit in Los Angeles the day before. He'd been at Nelson, Murdock, & Page with Foggy and Karen earlier in the day, and then….
He was wearing his Daredevil suit, so he'd obviously been at his nighttime job, but couldn't remember a second of it.
Focus your senses. Push past that humming, find the noises, any noises, around you, that tell you where you are. Once you know that, you'll be able to piece together how you got here.
He breathed in and out, in and out, in…out, in…out. The buzzing slowly receded to the back of his mind, and the general appearance of his surroundings came into focus. He was indoors, that much was for certain. Ceiling, walls, carpeted floors, but that was it. No furnishings or decorations of any sort. He stood up and walked over to the closest wall. Covered in wallpaper. Old wallpaper, from the feel of it. Dry, brittle.
And wherever he was, it was large. For every layer of fluorescent buzzing he peeled away, there was another, more distant one there to replace it. The lights continued for hundreds of yards from him, in all directions, maybe farther, and so presumably did the building as a whole. Yet no matter how far he stretched his senses, that was all there was to hear. None of the usual sounds of New York City, like the rapid breathing and quickened footsteps of someone late for work, or the rustling of a discarded newspaper blowing down the sidewalk, or the cursing of a taxi driver as a pedestrian cut him off.
No heartbeats.
Wherever he was, he was the only one there.
And that wasn't all. Beyond the lights, above the ceiling, he sensed…nothing. Not a second floor, or even noises like chirping birds or the rustle of a breeze. Something about it felt off. It didn't feel so much like a lack of anything above him, but…a presence of nothingness. Not just an empty sky, but something else. Something more…sinister?
Matt left the room he was in to head farther into the structure. Or maybe closer to the way out? The place was easily a couple square miles at least, and he was still too far from any exits to detect them.
After another lengthy period of wandering, a disturbing thought occurred to him, tickling the back of his mind: what if there was no way out? He tried to dismiss the thought, but there was no getting rid of it now. A never-ending maze of wallpaper, fluorescent lights, and damp carpets didn't exactly seem likely. But then again, a few years ago, he wouldn't have called a sorcerer creating a sparkling portal to transport him from Hell's Kitchen to the wreckage of the Avengers Compound to battle a giant purple warlord and his army from outer space a "likely" occurrence either. Reality had never molded itself around what he thought to be possible.
Anyone else likely would've completely lost track of time after half as much time in a place with no windows and such repetitive surroundings. But having been blind over two-thirds of his life, Matt had grown accustomed to telling time without any external aid. So he knew that about five hours had passed before he started to tire of walking, and just over two more elapsed before he finally sat down and leaned against a wall. Just a few minutes' rest from all this accursed walking. Then he'd be ready to head out again and resume looking for an exit from this place.
But of course, Matt's sense of time was only reliable as long as he was conscious. So he had no idea how much more time had passed when he awoke to the sound of footsteps and a heartbeat. Distant, but unmistakable.
"Someone's here," he breathed.
He jumped to his feet and tilted his head in the direction of the sounds. They were still too far away for him to discern any specifics. This person could've been someone else trapped in this place, or…someone ho had trapped him in here, maybe? He couldn't remember the past several hours, but he was sure he would've recalled being somewhere like this before waking up, so someone had obviously brought him here from wherever in Hell's Kitchen he'd been before.
Either way, the best course of action seemed to be heading towards the person. If they were someone else stuck in the maze, maybe they could work together to find a way out. And if they had brought him here, then he was still suited up as Daredevil; maybe he could give them sufficient motivation to let him out.
He headed in the direction of the person. If there was one good thing about the setup of the maze, it was that he doubted he'd find his path impeded by an uninterrupted wall of a series of U-turns and convoluted paths. All the rooms were connected to easily pass between them, and he doubted that would be changing anytime soon.
Suddenly, the person spoke, their voice blaring through his head. "Is there no reception anywhere in this goddamn place?"
He stopped for a second to reorient himself. It certainly hadn't taken him long to grow accustomed to the silence…except that infernal buzzing, which he was noticing less and less. But he immediately recognized the voice.
"Jessica."